A good thing is when the have cases of “imported” Sapporo Draft (aka Premium) (kara サッポロビール株式会社 Sapporo Bīru Kabushiki-gaisha) on sale for $13. (Yeah, imported from Ontario, Canada(!), but I guess an import is an import.)

Anyway, enjoy your Meat Days, San Francisco!

Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?

*I haven’t a clue on how to best fix earthquake-unsafe J-Town. Before the Great Recession, the solution was going to be something like 500 new condos in the nabe, each with a $100,000 fee tacked on to help pay for a new Japantown Garage and whatnot. But some businesses inside the horrible mall buildings are thriving and some are not, so it’s not an easy call to have a giant implosion and just start over. And, up to now, there’s been no money for that kind of thing anyway…

*Oh, not really. Actually, after watching on a friend’s big screen (’cause I don’t I have cable ’cause I want the Comcast monopoly to die die die) I had to ride my bike on up to Pac Heights. The city was electric, all over, not just in the Mission and in the Haights.

This amendment forbids further federal expenditures for the Central Subway project in San Francisco.

The project is a 1.7 mile subway that is estimated to cost $1.6 billion –– and those cost estimates continue to rise. Its baseline budget has more than doubled in nine years and shows no signs of slowing. The current estimate brings the cost to nearly $1 billion per mile. That’s five times the cost per lane mile of Boston’s scandalous “Big Dig.”

It was supposed to link local light rail and bus lines with CalTrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit, but it’s so badly designed that it bypasses 25 of the 30 light rail and bus lines that it crosses. To add insult to insanity, it dismantles the seamless light-rail to BART connection currently available to passengers at Market Street, requiring them instead to walk nearly a quarter mile to make the new connection. Experts estimate it will cost commuters between five and ten minutes of additional commuting time on every segment of the route.

This administration is attempting to put federal taxpayers – our constituents — on the hook for nearly a billion dollars of the cost of this folly through the “New Starts” program – or more than 60 percent. We have already squandered $123 million on it. This amendment forbids another dime of our constituents’ money being wasted on this boondoggle.

Now here is an important question that members may wish to ponder: “Why should your constituents pay nearly a billion dollars for a purely local transportation project in San Francisco that is opposed by a broad, bi-partisan coalition of San Franciscans, including the Sierra Club, Save Muni (a grassroots organization of Muni Riders), the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods, and three of the four local newspapers serving San Francisco?

Why, indeed.

I’m sorry, I don’t have a good answer to that question. But those who vote against this amendment had better have one when their constituents ask, “What in the world were you thinking?”

# # #

This amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act (HR 5972) was approved by the House on June 29th. The legislation next goes to the Senate.

The signs in the windows on Post Street tell the story – MEAT DAY is coming this Sunday, March 29th. If this is all you can see, then it’s tough to figure out the meaning. The only clues are bull, rooster, and pig icons along with Chinese characters that literally mean “meat day” or “day of meat.”